2 ms·

I was a different person when I was twelve. Would still apologise to anyone I ever hurt back then. It's way better than stubborness.

dllthomas 12y ago
Organizations are not people. Treating them as if they are makes for poor reasoning.
- guard-of-terra 12y ago
  I still don't see why an organization should not apologise for its own policy. Post-communist states did apologise for things they did decades before while being very different regimes. And that was a good thing; stubborness would be a disaster there, you can't move forward unless you repent. If you think of it, Marujuana criminalization took a toll of human lives comparable to GULAG.
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    To paraphrase OED, an apology is an expression of regret for something one has done wrong. An organization cannot experience regret, so demanding an apology from the organization is guaranteed to be empty. An apology from members of the organization may well be meaningful, but the current members of the organization have not done wrong (at least, no wrong that caused the initial passing of the 1937 act). Basing your voting on whether your politicians are improving drug policy and/or have committed to do so on the future is totally reasonable. Basing your voting on your demand for an inherently empty ritual seems... not. edited to add: Note that a Truth & Reconciliation type process is an entirely different thing - exposing and acknowledging the truth can be important and allow healing in ways that have no particular relationship to emotions fictionally experienced by the organization.
    - vegedor 12y ago
      I can regret, i.e. feel sorry for, what I didn't cause. I can also apologize in defense of someone else. You English shouldn't constantly use Greek words if you don't understand them * ;) In that sense, speeches in senate are exactly that, even before laws are put in action. Sadly, my opinion about the credibility can't be written here in good faith. *) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/apology#Etymology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/apology#Etymology
      - dllthomas 12y ago
        An etymology is not a word's "true meaning". Given the wink, you may well know this, though it could be that the gibe was intended in jest but the broader import was not so I felt it necessary to make it explicit. A word derived from another language can (and often does) acquire an entirely different meaning in its new environment. You can certainly regret what you did not cause. You can express sympathy for what you did not cause. I think an apology is necessarily an expression of regret for something you had a role in, however. The word "sorry" expresses regret, but that regret is only part of an apology when there is some level of culpability. Apologizing on behalf of someone you've been associating with for a long while is regret that your impact did not lead to better behavior from them. Apologizing on behalf of someone you've just met seems weird to me. Apologizing for things done before you were born, even weirder. As I've said elsewhere, that doesn't mean I have a strong opposition to people doing or saying weird things - I just think we should try and be clear in our thinking.
        musername 12y ago
        Does newspeak have different meaning to you, than it used to, too?
        dllthomas 12y ago
        I'm sorry? Are you saying that unless we pretend that words actually mean what they meant in other languages centuries ago, we're redefining words to control thought and political discourse?
- Natsu 12y ago
  Didn't stop the British government from apologizing to Alan Turing....
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    The pardon in 2013 was granted by the Queen, who was already queen and capable of granting him pardon when he was convicted. Her apology in that context could well be meaningful (I don't know whether she gave one alongside the pardon - the pardon could possibly be interpreted as one, but it's a slightly different thing as well). The 2009 apology by Gordon Brown made somewhat less sense. I don't have any strong opposition to well-intentioned nonsensical theatrics, but I think that it can lead to confusion and that keeping in mind that an organization is a different kind of thing than an individual is important.

dllthomas 12y ago

Organizations are not people. Treating them as if they are makes for poor reasoning.

guard-of-terra 12y ago
I still don't see why an organization should not apologise for its own policy. Post-communist states did apologise for things they did decades before while being very different regimes. And that was a good thing; stubborness would be a disaster there, you can't move forward unless you repent. If you think of it, Marujuana criminalization took a toll of human lives comparable to GULAG.
- dllthomas 12y ago
  To paraphrase OED, an apology is an expression of regret for something one has done wrong. An organization cannot experience regret, so demanding an apology from the organization is guaranteed to be empty. An apology from members of the organization may well be meaningful, but the current members of the organization have not done wrong (at least, no wrong that caused the initial passing of the 1937 act). Basing your voting on whether your politicians are improving drug policy and/or have committed to do so on the future is totally reasonable. Basing your voting on your demand for an inherently empty ritual seems... not. edited to add: Note that a Truth & Reconciliation type process is an entirely different thing - exposing and acknowledging the truth can be important and allow healing in ways that have no particular relationship to emotions fictionally experienced by the organization.
  - vegedor 12y ago
    I can regret, i.e. feel sorry for, what I didn't cause. I can also apologize in defense of someone else. You English shouldn't constantly use Greek words if you don't understand them * ;) In that sense, speeches in senate are exactly that, even before laws are put in action. Sadly, my opinion about the credibility can't be written here in good faith. *) https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/apology#Etymology https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/apology#Etymology
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      An etymology is not a word's "true meaning". Given the wink, you may well know this, though it could be that the gibe was intended in jest but the broader import was not so I felt it necessary to make it explicit. A word derived from another language can (and often does) acquire an entirely different meaning in its new environment. You can certainly regret what you did not cause. You can express sympathy for what you did not cause. I think an apology is necessarily an expression of regret for something you had a role in, however. The word "sorry" expresses regret, but that regret is only part of an apology when there is some level of culpability. Apologizing on behalf of someone you've been associating with for a long while is regret that your impact did not lead to better behavior from them. Apologizing on behalf of someone you've just met seems weird to me. Apologizing for things done before you were born, even weirder. As I've said elsewhere, that doesn't mean I have a strong opposition to people doing or saying weird things - I just think we should try and be clear in our thinking.
      - musername 12y ago
        Does newspeak have different meaning to you, than it used to, too?
        dllthomas 12y ago
        I'm sorry? Are you saying that unless we pretend that words actually mean what they meant in other languages centuries ago, we're redefining words to control thought and political discourse?
Natsu 12y ago
Didn't stop the British government from apologizing to Alan Turing....
- dllthomas 12y ago
  The pardon in 2013 was granted by the Queen, who was already queen and capable of granting him pardon when he was convicted. Her apology in that context could well be meaningful (I don't know whether she gave one alongside the pardon - the pardon could possibly be interpreted as one, but it's a slightly different thing as well). The 2009 apology by Gordon Brown made somewhat less sense. I don't have any strong opposition to well-intentioned nonsensical theatrics, but I think that it can lead to confusion and that keeping in mind that an organization is a different kind of thing than an individual is important.